Screenwriter Dave Kajganich tells Dread Central that the big screen remake of Stephen King‘s It will be “set in the mid-1980s and in the present almost equally — mirroring the twenty-odd-year gap King uses in the book”. But more importantly, the film “will not be PG-13. This will be R.” Kajganich explains that the R-Rating “means we can really honor the book and engage with the traumas (both the paranormal ones and those they deal with at home and school) that these character endure.”

Of course, the book is 1,104 pages and Kajganich confirms that Warner Bros wants to adapt the novel for a single film, which means a lot of the source material will have to be cut. The television movie was criticized for being vastly different from the book in order to keep the running time down to 192 minutes. I seriously doubt the theatrical film version will be even close to that long. Two of the other big criticisms of the television movie were that it had been sanitized for public airing (sex/violence) and suffered from budgetary limitations. From the sound of it, the new film will address some of those concerns.